Young Wild Club Learns Quickly, Battles Valiantly in 2025-26 Season
WENATCHEE, Wash. – The Wenatchee Wild wore their road whites for their first game of the 2025-26 Western Hockey League season, but a different color described this year’s group when it debuted at the Everett Silvertips on September 20.
Green.
When the Wild stepped onto the ice to open their third WHL season in the Wenatchee Valley, the roster included just eight players who had played meaningful minutes in major junior hockey. Only two of them, Josh Fluker and Brandon Osborne, were blueliners – neither was in the lineup on opening night. The club also turned to two new goaltenders to patrol the crease, with Czech junior standout Tobias Tvrznik doing the honors at Angel of the Winds Arena that night, and Minnesota-born Cal Conway waiting in the wings.
At the end of the season, that roster was full of players whose eyes were quickly opened to the rigors of the WHL schedule and playing style, and who had also learned what it takes to win against WHL competition. The Wild finished this season with 25 wins, eclipsing their total from the previous year, and though the 25 wins tied for the fewest in this year’s Western Conference standings, the depth of this year’s race in the league’s western half was historic. Not since 2015 had every team in one of the WHL’s conference races finished the season with at least 25 wins, and that was done against a schedule of 72 games, four more than the current WHL slate.
After inheriting an empty draft cupboard when the former Winnipeg ICE moved to Wenatchee in 2023, the tunnel displayed a few cracks of light this season, as the draft picks acquired in trades for early Wenatchee WHL stars like Matthew Savoie and Conor Geekie began to bear fruit. 2024 first-rounder Boston Tait embarked on his first full WHL season on the Wild blue line, while 2025 first-rounder Kalen Miles played a handful of games and scored his first two junior goals – both of their selections were acquired in trades for those two future NHLers. Tait potted his first WHL goal in front of more than 16,000 fans on December 7, the eventual winner in a Teddy Bear Toss tilt at the Calgary Hitmen, while Miles’s first WHL goal against Everett a week later went into the books as Wenatchee’s Teddy Bear tally.
“Watching what Miles was able to do when he came in – we got to see him at camp, and then at Christmas, and then when he came back at the end of the year, his development is going straight up,” said Wenatchee Wild general manager Bliss Littler. “We’re excited to have him here next year on a full-time basis. There will definitely be others in the pipeline that will be here next fall.”
Once the Wild hit the win column for the first time on October 12 with a 7-3 victory over the Seattle Thunderbirds, more wins began to follow. Wenatchee earned its first road win two weeks later, coming back from down 2-0 to knock off the Penticton Vees 4-2 – the Penticton lead evaporated within just 12 seconds late in the second period, and first-year forward Rui Han undressed Jesse Sanche to score his very first goal halfway through the third for the eventual winner.
The Wild went 6-6 in November and did most of their damage at home, knocking off division leaders on three successive Saturdays – Saskatoon fell in overtime on November 1, followed the next week by a one-goal win against the Prince George Cougars. The Prince Albert Raiders came in on November 15, having recently taken the East Division lead from Saskatoon – they fared no better, also walking out of the Wolves’ Den with an overtime defeat.
As the season progressed, even when Wenatchee wasn’t in the win column, they often weren’t far out of it either – the Wild stacked up points in six of their final nine games of January, and then opened February by shutting out the Victoria Royals, 2-0.
Six losses in seven to start the month of March ended the team’s bid to return to the WHL playoffs, but the Wild were not interested in simply bowing out quietly at year’s end, sending off 20-year-olds Riley Bassen and Sam Elliott with a 5-1 win over Scotty Munro Memorial Trophy winner Everett in their home finale on March 20. Less than 24 hours later, Wenatchee nearly erased a four-goal Silvertips lead in front of a sold-out Everett crowd in a 6-5 loss in Snohomish County.
“It was disappointing not making the playoffs, but it was also encouraging how hard we competed and how hard we battled,” said Littler. “We did know that years two and three (in the WHL) were going to be tough – I think a lot of people were betting that we’d bottom out with eight to 10 wins in one of those seasons. Winning 25 games, that says a lot about how hard our players competed and how hard our coaches worked to get our kids ready and prepared every night. For us to come down to the second-to-last weekend of the season still battling for a playoff spot, you’ve got to give our players and our coaching staff a lot of credit.”
Having so many new faces meant lots of new places for scoring to come from – Josh Toll missed only one game during the season and finished with 54 points, including 50 assists – he entered unprecedented territory for the club, becoming the first defenseman in its 30-year WHL history to lead the team in scoring. Perennial fan favorite Luka Shcherbyna was his usual self, topping the 40-point plateau for the second straight year and leading the team with 23 goals, while rookie forward Mason Kraft flipped last year’s Mr. Hockey honor in his native Minnesota into a 40-point WHL season of his own.
The Wild were able to turn an ongoing bite from the injury bug into new opportunities for their youngest players – in 36 games this season, the club dressed two 16-year-olds on the blue line. In three of those games, the blue line featured three 2009-born players. 2008-born forward Mathias Silaban made his breakthrough during one of Wenatchee’s stretches when its lineup was shortest – the Arvada, Colorado native posted his first goal November 14 at the Portland Winterhawks, logging his first multi-point game by adding an assist that night. By the end of the season, he was one of 10 players to reach the 20-point mark with the Wild, and had earned the team’s Most Improved Player honor.
“When you look at Boston, there were many nights that he was in that 22- to 25-minute range, which is unheard of for a kid his age – the minutes he played, and who he played against,” said Littler. “He played in all situations, so he set himself up really nicely for his draft year next year. When Daniel Vaillant came in, we weren’t quite sure what to expect, and he got better every week. He grew and got better, and in situations like that, you’re playing guys that at their age, generally don’t get a bunch of ice.”
Head coach Don Nachbaur eclipsed one league milestone while challenging another, and the addition of a first-year WHL assistant coach helped sharpen the special teams. Nachbaur passed Portland Winterhawks legend Ken Hodge on November 14 with his 1,412th game as a head coach in the league, and finished the season just two wins shy of Hodge for second on the league’s all-time wins list. Assistant coach Ethan Goldberg joined the team during the offseason, just a few years removed from guiding the United States Hockey League’s Tri-City Storm to the league’s top penalty kill in back-to-back-to-back years. Goldberg worked his magic in Wenatchee as well, helping the Wild finish the season tied with Penticton for the WHL’s top penalty-killing mark at nearly 82 percent.
Wenatchee fielded four goaltenders in all during the 2025-26 campaign, led by Tvrznik, a Czech import who was named the Western Conference’s second-best netminder with 16 wins and the WHL’s third-best save percentage, at .913. His 60 saves on opening night in Everett tied the club’s 29-year-old WHL franchise record, set during its inaugural year as the Edmonton ICE in 1996. After leading his Stillwater High School team to last year’s Minnesota state high school final, Conway saw steady improvement over the season’s second half, ending the year with eight wins and a .901 save percentage. Wenatchee was one of only two teams on the circuit with two qualified goalies over .900 for the season, while 2009-born prospects Mark Djomo and Carsten Leyerzapf left a good sign of things to come as well. Djomo went .901 in net over his first three WHL appearances, while Leyerzapf denied 54 Everett shots in his WHL debut on March 20 for his first win in the league. He closed his two outings with 54 stops each night and a total save percentage of .939, turning aside the first 49 shots he saw his first night out.
“We feel that Toby is one of the top goaltenders in the league, and he’ll definitely hear his name called on draft day. We’ve heard from a lot of teams that have him high on the radar,” said Littler. “We promised Cal 10 to 15 games, and he got in over 25 and ended up over a 90 percent save percentage. I think that’s an area that we’re extremely deep in right now.”
One year after seeing two players selected in the National Hockey League draft, the Wild may be poised to top that this June in Buffalo, New York – Tvrznik heads to the offseason as the fifth-ranked draft-eligible North American goaltender by NHL Central Scouting, and the second-ranked draft-eliglble backstop in the WHL. Forward Caelan Joudrey ranks 101st among North American skaters on the NHL Central Scouting rankings, and German-born defenseman Darian Rolsing isn’t far behind at 158th, meaning the club could easily see three of its players chosen by NHL teams this summer.
“Our coaching staff has done a great job with Joudrey,” said Littler. “Every bit of his game has improved. His defensive play, his offensive play, his physical play, thinking the game, the power play, penalty kill, 5-on-5, he’s made huge strides. I can’t wait to see where he goes in the draft. With Darian, at 6’6″, he’s a big kid. The coaching staff did a great job, where he was a much different player in March than he was in September and October. He’s made good strides.”
Wenatchee’s first full WHL season with NCAA eligibility saw several players take advantage of the opportunity, starting with Shcherbyna’s commitment to Colgate University in the offseason entering 2025-26 and followed by Joudrey announcing his commitment to Quinnipiac University in October. Tvrznik’s commitment to Ohio State and Elliott’s commitment to Alaska-Fairbanks rounded out the list, with at least one more likely in the weeks following the NCAA’s Frozen Four.
The near-future appears even brighter for the Wild, after being awarded the third selection in next month’s WHL Prospects Draft, the highest pick in Wenatchee’s brief WHL history. The end of this season means the team now turns its attention to 2026-27, with season tickets currently on sale. Updated news and information on Wild hockey are always available at www.wenatcheewildhockey.com, and on the team’s social media platforms on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.
